Has Sony unleashed the most epic, most violent video game ever?

A battle scene from God of War 3.

Photograph by: Handout
, Sony

Those with even a passing awareness of Greek mythology and its gods will have the understanding that their world was a very violent and tumultuous one. But did the ancient Greeks debate -- as they debated everything else – the wisdom of writing down these legends, for fear of what all of this gruesome violence might do to the tender young minds of their communities?

Alas, history reveals no clues.

One thing is sure, however: these days, now that such legends can be told in the more interactive medium of video games, occasionally a particularly violent or disturbing game manages to shock a few parents whose children were never supposed to see it in the first place. When this happens, the squawks from the lofty perches of moral judgment rise to a cacophony of ill-informed opinion pieces in newspapers and blogs, alarmist segments on the evening news, and Sunday sermons from one end of the world to the other.

If just one game manages to re-ignite these fires this year (as “Grand Theft Auto IV” did in 2008, and “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” did in 2009), the leading candidate for controversy in 2010 is most certainly “God of War 3,” the final game of a trilogy that is already renowned for its gritty storyline and gory gameplay.

Like its two predecessors, this game is extremely, unabashedly violent, and now that it has graduated to the PlayStation 3, the “God of War” franchise’s violence is being painted on a larger and more detailed canvas than ever thanks to the glories of high definition.

Some might argue that violence in video games is as unavoidable as it is in any other medium of storytelling, from movies all the way back to Shakespeare and beyond. After all, we’re dealing with monsters and Greek deities in “God of War 3;” with cyclops and undead skeleton warriors; and half-man, half-horse centaurs; and sometimes these beasts don’t exactly listen to kind words and reason. No, there are no depictions of puppy dogs in this game, nor any of rainbows, because sometimes a giant Chimera – a deadly combination of snake, goat and lion – can only be stopped by having the horn that was freshly snapped off of its forehead plunged directly into its eye socket. That’s just the way it goes.

Extreme violence in movies is usually overlooked these days, as many of the boo-birds have moved on to the more interactive world of video games. But while “God of War 3” director Stig Asmussen bemoaned the double standard in an interview during the game’s final development stages in 2009, he certainly wasn’t advocating his game as anything that children should be exposed to.

“As a father, I wouldn’t want my kids playing these games, absolutely not,” he said. “But I think video games are a legitimate art form, and I think as our generation gets older, people will start to understand that. I think we take this job very seriously, and I think video games belong right alongside movies. We’ll see where things go in the next 10 or 20 years.”

Ken Feldman, who served as the art director for “God of War 3,” agrees.

“A lot of the vision, a lot of that comes from the writings of Greek mythology, like Homer’s Odyssey,” Feldman said. “And the level of violence that’s in those writings, a lot of that is the sort of art we’re trying to create. And I’m not ashamed to go out there and say that what we’re doing really is art. If (15th century painter) Hieronymus Bosch was creating visions of torment in Hell, I think some of the stuff we’re trying to do in this game is just as relevant as that.”

The team that developed “God of War 3” at Sony’s studio in Santa Monica, California might not have set out to make the most violent video game of all time, but it’s safe to say that they were definitely aiming to make the most epic game of all time, and many early reviews suggest it’s a goal they’ve come dangerously close to achieving.

As the lead environment artist on the first “God of War” game, released in 2005 for the PlayStation 2, Feldman skipped working on 2007’s “God of War 2” entirely, and went straight into working on “God of War 3.” He’s still amazed by the chasm between the arsenals of tools that were used to create the two games.

“It’s really amazing going back and looking at that artwork,” Feldman says of the original game. “We were so limited in memory – our texture sizes were 64 by 64 pixels, and now they’re 2048 by 2048.”

“You could take something from ‘God of War 1,’ when you first saw Hades, and he’s on the battlefield destroying Athens -- that was kind of faked, with a sky box back there, with some textures and stuff like that. Now we can actually create things like that with tons of moving dynamic lights, very high resolution, and instead of just being a backdrop, we can drop the player right into that event. We can make the player think they’re in a movie.”

Part of the cinematic experience comes from having the game’s lead character, Kratos, fighting enemies that are among the largest in video game history. And this time around, rather than being set in static environments as most games are, some levels in “God of War 3” actually take place entirely on the body of a massive moving creature.

“We’re calling them the Titans,” Asmussen said of the game’s massive bosses. “Some of them are taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago, so they’re huge.”

When asked if there was anything he could compare these behemoths to, Asmussen had to reach beyond the realm of video games.

“It’s like if you took the D-Day Battle of Normandy and combined it with the movie ‘Cloverfield,’ and just throw Kratos right in the middle of that,” Asmussen said with a broad smile.

“It’s really tough to design for this because we have nothing to refer to, so when you get in and you start populating these moving levels, it’s pretty crazy. We’ve had to write a game engine that’s really designed to build on this level of scale.”

John Hight served as executive producer of “God of War 3,” and while some of his employees will likely disagree with him, he insists he was content to more or less leave his team alone during the game’s development. This latest effort was not their first run around the track together, as the “God of War 3” credits boast a nearly 70 per cent retention rate from the team that started on the original “God of War” game more than seven years ago. “These guys have literally grown up in the industry, and on Kratos,” Hight said. “I prefer to be like the coach. They’re the all-stars, and I get to watch them perform. It’s quite a pleasure.

“This is the third game we’ve done,” Hight adds. “They know what their job is, and we know how to divide up the work. These guys are the best in their game, and as such, over the last two games, there’s been a lot of things that were left on the plate that they wanted to see in the game, and this is the first time that we’ve really had the technology to be able to realize it. As far as I know, from the discussions we’ve had, there’s really no major feature that was talked about that isn’t in this game. And they run like a well-oiled team.”

If he wasn’t busy yanking eyeballs from the skulls of his giant enemies, Kratos might even agree.

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